Tag Archives: gps

Today, the real-time tracking Android app See Me GPS Tracker got it’s free, Ad supported version. It is fully functional, as long as you support the costs connected with running the tracking servers by visiting in-app advertisers.

There are not many Android Real time trackers. If you are looking for real-time android tracking app, try SeeMe Tracker, as it offers realtime moving zoomable Google Map. You can share your ID, which allows viewers to see you “move” just with selected people and you can change this ID from within the app anytime.

I’ve turned on Web-tracking in my MGMaps, so since now, you can see my last position on the world zoomable map.

It shows last position of me (my phone), ofcourse when I am running the application. When you point over marker of my position, it will show when the position was acquired. If you click the marker, you will be transferred to big map on gmap-track.com.

Today, I found the perfect way to make my Garmin Geko 201 little bit more useful. I’ve always wanted to use it when I am driving car. Navigating to one point isn’t the best option, because it thinks about the trip as about flight on a direct line to the destination.
I was searching for some simple solution to store trip’s track in the memory and than driving by it. Today I found one:

Prerequisities:
* Garmin Geko 201 GPS unit (or anything like that)
* cable to connect GPS to PC
* Firefox browser (I’ve tested it on 3.0beta 5, so it should be in fact any version 2+)
* access to the internet

Let’s start:
1) Set the protocol to Garmin in the GPS’s Interface settings
2) Download EasyGPS, free application for Windows, set it up to work with your GPS (choose COM port)
3) Download and unpack GPSBabel to perform some track cleanup (to fit in 500point per track Geko’s limit)
4) Open http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx/ and drag the yellow link found on the page in your Firefox’s Bookmark toolbar (if not displayed, click right mouse button on for example Home icon and select to display the toolbar)
5) 4) Open Google Maps “Get directions” , write in the departure place (address) and the destination and get the track description
6) Click on GmapToGPX button in bookmark toolbar (must have javascript enabled in Firefox, but it is quite normal)
7) New page opens with the track description in GPX format.
8 ) Click on Full
9) Copy generated code to clipboard and save as for example track.gpx file in GPSBabel’s directory – rather save it in UTF-8 Encoding, otherwise you can get errors from GPSBabel in next step
10) open command line in GPSBabel’s directory and run following:gpsbabel -i gpx -f track.gpx -x simplify,count=500 -o gpx -F track2.gpx
11) Now we have track simplified to 500points, which is Geko’s limit
12) Open file track2.gpx in EasyGPS and upload it to Geko
13) Voila! We have very detailed track to use for navigation!
14) Sit in the car, start Geko, select from Track menu GOOGLEDRIVDIT and select navigate – from beginning to the end, or opposite on the way back

That’s all. It seems like many steps, but it is VERY easy, I’ve just wrote too much description for better understanding. Today I’ve driven 150km by the generated track and it was perfect. Simplification of the track didn’t affect accuracy at all!